Usually Google needs no introduction. But what it stands for is quite relative and as all things in life, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Thus, for my mum Google is the whole internet (!), for some tech...

Aristotle wrote in his work Metaphysics that sight is man’s most significant sense. “We understand because we see”, Alberto Cairo similarly states in his book The functional Art. Philosophy has tried to understand sight and the relation between images and human perception since the beginning...

What happens when you knock on the ‘door’ of the Wikipedia founder? Apparently nothing, if you are Spanish language speaker. Compelled to create an article for ‘the mother of all wikis’, I assumed that writing about some hobby or...

Some time has passed since the official launch of qwiki (see the Masters of Media Blog initial impressions). Although still in alpha, a more profound critique can be put forward as the platform evolved and opened itself to users.

The Edge project asked artists, scientists and writers how the Internet changed their way of thinking. Specifically their way of thinking, resulting in a book with diverse and personal essays. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia and Citizendium wrote an...

Polish Wikipedia has more than 832 000 articles which makes it 5th according to the number of entries, after English, German, French and Italian edition. I believe that it could have got even more entries if it wasn’t for...

Questioning whether one can sabotage Wikipedia is out of the question; there have been many cases throughout the last years. Some were humourous, others were insulting, many were vulgar. These cases were all to be found by Wikipedia editors...

So you’re thinking, ‘fight’… ‘battle’? What kind of nonsense is this guy stirring up? How can you fight Wikipedia? Good question. The only answer to that is yes, it’s possible, and most importantly, probable if you’re intending on making...

I never thought one Wikipedia entry could go as wrong as mine has. Although it was quite easy and interesting to write such an article, keeping it turned into a true challenge. Yet, I am sad to say, it...

Contrary to many stories I heard before attempting to make my first contributions to Wikipedia, the actual process was not that much of a hassle at all. I made three (albeit minor) contributions, namely editing two existing entries and...

This week I made a new (dutch) Wikipedia page about ‘Source Festival’, this is a music festival which has two editions a year, one in July and one in February . Wikipedia Source Festival Because this festival has had...

As a follow up of his first book, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky now present to us the concept of Cognitive Surplus. In previous years of this so called “new world”, criticizing the Television became a common thing. The...

We shouldn’t be talking about the rise of the social media and new media any more. It’s here, in everyone’s lives on a daily basis. And it’s doing things to us. It’s changing the way we communicate, learn, socialise...

Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, had a very difficult task to accomplish: in 25’ she had to report on the Foundation’s activities during the year 2010- 2011, but also to treat the attendees to a sneak...

03/08/2011, 08:20 am – Schiphol airport. Holding a small handbag in one hand and a packet of cinnamon cookies in the other, I was waiting to check in for my flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. From Tel Aviv I...

You can read part I of the interview here. The existing community & the new users Usually, the users are the ones who approach Wikipedia. With this campaign, however, it is the Wikipedia community that approaches the public. What...

Yiannis Giannarakis is the general coordinator of the “I participate in Wikipedia” campaign, which aims at the development and enrichment of the Greek – language Wikipedia. The initiative, launched in January 2011, is supported by the Greek-language Wikipedia community,...

This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle” As shown in the previous post, the “anyone can edit” philosophy of Wikipedia is often viewed with great skepticism in academic circles, while its...

This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle” 17.000.000 articles. 91.000 active contributors. 270 languages. No matter what words one would choose to describe Wikipedia, numbers cannot speak but the truth: Wikipedia,...

In the first 10 years of its existence, Wikipedia, this unusual “experiment” as it used to be called, has evolved into the world’s greatest reference source. Far more than that however, Wikipedia’s most surprising achievement is that it turned...

Introduction Imagine yourself in the following situation: You, a scientist pur sang, are busy researching and analyzing A and you are having doubts about the values in the model, suspecting a technical error. Without hesitation, you compose a tweet...

According to Wikipedia's edit history, on 23 September 2010 shortly before midnight, the entry for Julian Assange was edited by a user whose IP address belongs to the Australian Government’s Justice Department. The user attempted to make a seemingly...

The Internet, and the emergence of Web 2.0 in particular, have been celebrated for their liberatory potential, setting free the individual consumers once bounded by industrial inertia. We only need to take a quick look at the Arctic Monkey’s...